Moral rhetoric can reframe gun regulation opposition as patriotic duty and honor

Evidence

This call to arms also illustrates the moral engagement subfunction in the mechanism of social and moral justification. Fighting gun regulation becomes a source of patriotic honor, moral courage, and self-pride. Each year the National Council of Teachers of English presents its Doublespeak Award to public figures or organizations employing deceptive, euphemistic, or self-contradictory ways. In 1999, the award went to the National Rifle Association, with special recognition of Charlton Heston for his “artful twisting of language to blur issues,” and the “invocation of patriotism, reverence, love of freedom, and the opposing use of dread words to color the opposition” (National Council of Teachers of English, 1999). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1175

Categorization

• XREF: Doublespeak Award connects to the moral disengagement scaffolding earlier in the book and to rhetorical framing studies generally. — connects to: The rhetoric of shared sacrifice operates ideologically without requiring belief — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 726; Moral outrage over sacred-value violations depends heavily on rhetorical framing. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values…, 1